- When Marshall switches sides on the Arcadian dispute, his friendship with Barney is compromised and the gang is banned from the bar. Meanwhile, Ted finally finds the courage to confront Zoey about the same topic.
- After Marshall leaves GNB to pursue a job with the NRDC, he finds that his chance to work there have been dashed by his ex-boss Arthur. Needing to find a job with a purpose, he gets an opportunity as the lawyer for the Save the Arcadian group headed by Zoey. This move places Marshall and Barney at odds with each other. Their feud escalates to the point of a fight which gets not only them but the rest of the gang banned from MacLaren's. The ban has the equally annoying result for Robin and Lily of relinquishing their booth to a woman who has been hovering and preying on it. Robin and Lily decide they need to mount a scheme to get Marshall and Barney back to being friends, the scheme which entails plying them with a myriad of different cocktails to get them into a specific mood at each stage of their reconciliation. Meanwhile, Ted has stayed out of the Marshall/Barney fray much as he has stayed out of the disagreement of the Arcadian with Zoey: they just don't talk about it. But as Ted and Zoey are about to head off for a romantic getaway, Ted feels it is time for them to talk about it and he makes a move that he thinks will get Zoey to his way of thinking about the Arcadian.—Huggo
- In the cold opening, Future Ted narrates that on the day Marshall resigned from GNB, his boss Arthur Hobbs asked to be put as his character reference when applying for a new job at an environmental organization. However, the organization rejects his application, revealing that Hobbs gave them negative feedback by recalling his supposed lack of professionalism (showing up for work at 2:30 PM, not adhering to the dress code, not wearing pants in front of female co-workers) and stories about his disdain for the environment (including clubbing a seal with an even cuter seal). Marshall returns to GNB to confront Hobbs and runs into Zoey, who offers him a job as her group's lawyer.
At MacLaren's, Barney hands out invitations to the Arcadian's demolition. Zoey comes over and introduces Marshall as her lawyer, which upsets Barney because he helped Marshall land a job at GNB in the first place. Zoey knows that having an ex-GNB employee on their side would be huge for their cause. He launches a prank war against Marshall by doing questionable disgusting things to anything Marshall's mouth touches and sending photographs to him. Marshall retaliates by ruining Barney's hookups at the bar over several days, for instance by pretending to be a doctor and telling Barney he had crabs with "super-herpes", or that his wife gave birth to a boy, or that the woman is the 250th that Barney has slept with.
The pranks go too far and Carl (Joe Nieves) bans the four of them from the bar (including Lily and Robin, who were irritated by a woman lurking by their booth for a chance for her and her friends to sit there, along with presumably Ted). Distraught by the rift, Lily and Robin decide to have them make up using various drinks and discover that certain party drinks trigger various situations (e.g. daiquiris makes Marshall narcissistic, red wine brings out Barney's self-pitying side, while absinthe makes Robin hallucinate, gin gets Marshall violent, Burbon makes Ted weirdly good at beat boxing and martinis make exacerbate Lily's attraction to Robin). Armed with this knowledge, the two plan a drinking binge for Marshall and Barney by ordering drinks in such a way that they would get angry at each other first, then eventually reconcile. However, while the plan is underway, Marshall and Barney drink tequila shots and return to MacLaren's, where Barney tries to hit on a lesbian and Marshall eats chicken wings while smoking. The two forgive each other after Carl gives them beer and he lifts the ban on the gang.
However, a round of champagne that Lily ordered results in Marshall and Barney blacking out and resuming their feud at Ted's apartment the next morning. Seeing their plan go to waste, Robin suggests that she and Lily drink absinthe, which puts them in a dream-like state.
Meanwhile, Ted goes off to spend the weekend out of town with Zoey at Martha's Vineyard. When Lily tells him what happened between Marshall and Barney, he confronts Zoey while on the road (despite an agreement to never talk about the Arcadian) and told her that it was okay for her to disrupt his own plans, but seeing his friends turn on each other was too much.
Ted proposes that if Zoey can spend one night in the decrepit hotel, she will have him on her side to save it from demolition, a proposal which Zoey accepts. Ted asks her why saving the Arcadian was so important to Zoey. She reveals that she grew up in the hotel as a child, and its destruction would see part of her identity gone with it. When they see the Cockamouse creep around the room and discover its offspring, Zoey admits defeat and they spend the night at Ted's apartment. The next morning, Ted tells Barney that he is on Zoey's side and doesn't want the Arcadian demolished.
The last scene of the episode shows Lily and Robin pulling a prank on the women who stole their booth. When Barney's assistant shows the women a photograph, they scramble out of the bar in disgust. Lily and Robin immediately come back to clean up the booth.
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